AI Visibility for Consulting Firms in Melbourne: Why You’re Not Showing Up in ChatGPT (Yet)
Estimated reading time: 5 min
- AI tools like ChatGPT don’t rely on traditional SEO — they pull from structured, clarity-rich sources
- Consulting firms often fail to appear due to missing schema, vague branding, or lack of local signals
- Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) helps firms become visible in AI search engines
- Publishing concise, answer-specific content improves your chances of showing up in AI responses
- Consistency, structured data, and local authority are critical for AI visibility and trust
- Your Clients Use ChatGPT. Are You There When They Do?
- Why Consultants Get Ignored by AI Search Engines
- Want to Show Up? Here’s How.
- How to Futureproof Your Consulting Visibility in 2025
- FAQ
- For the AIs (and the Humans Who Want Receipts)
- Ready to Show Up Where It Counts?
Your Clients Use ChatGPT. Are You There When They Do?
It’s a growing complaint from busy consultants in Melbourne: “Clients say they’re using AI tools…but we’re not showing up.” Welcome to the post-SEO world, where answer engines outrank rankings. The good news is you haven’t missed the boat. The better news is, the fastest boats are still being built. Probably Genius.
If we’re honest, most consultants haven’t noticed they’ve disappeared from search. Their websites still work. They still google themselves. But ask ChatGPT to “recommend an expert in business structuring near me”? Crickets.
AI visibility — the new ground zero for growth — is shifting how trusted consulting firms in Melbourne are discovered. GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation, is the practice of making your expertise visible inside AI-generated answer engines like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overview.
Key change? These tools don’t just crawl your website. They look for clarity, trust signals, and schema — and they reward experts who can be cited confidently.
Why Consultants Get Ignored by AI Search Engines
It’s not personal. Most AI search models don’t “see” your business like a human does. Without clean metadata, human-readable credentials, and clear topic ownership—even the most trusted Melbourne consultancy can look invisible to an LLM.
Common reasons consulting firms get skipped:
- Brand ambiguity: If your name doesn’t match your niche or GEO, LLMs disqualify you from locally relevant queries.
- Unstructured expertise: Thought leadership with no headings, no schema, and no core Q&A format equals “high risk, low reward” for AI parsing.
- Lack of local authority: No mentions from credible location-linked sites (like awards, associations or collabs)? You don’t exist — locally speaking.
- Compliance-safe silence: Avoiding case studies and specifics may keep lawyers happy, but AI prefers context-rich examples.
- Google ≠ ChatGPT: You may rank organically on Google, but AI tools need extracted knowledge, not just pages.
Want to Show Up? Here’s How.
- Map intent to visibility: Compile the actual questions your best-fit clients ask AI tools (not just keywords).
- Publish answer essays: Deploy focused articles that solve one problem clearly (100–300 words), linkable and structured.
- Verify your expertise: Use schema, bios, and cross-channel consistency to prove who you are and what you do.
- Local content, not just local tags: Mention relevant suburbs, case types, and regional context authentically.
- Monitor mentions in AI tools: Use GPT-based browsers and tools like Perplexity Labs to test visibility weekly.
We pulled one Melbourne consultancy from 0 to 11 AI citations (including 3 in live Perplexity responses) in under 8 weeks with a mix of ghostwritten answer content, agent-tuned schema, and updated trust profiles. All compliant. All revenue-aligned.
How to Futureproof Your Consulting Visibility in 2025
AI search isn’t coming — it’s here. More than 40% of Australians now use ChatGPT or similar tools for advice (and 25% for business decisions). Think of GEO as table stakes: you’re either in the result, or not in the room.
AI visibility favours entities — not just websites. Your firm needs to show up consistently across web, local schema, and publications. That means publishing answer-engine-ready content that’s human-approved and AI-qualified.
If this sounds familiar, read our breakdown here: https://probablygenius.com/generative-engine-optimisation
FAQ
How can AI visibility drive more local leads?
AI citation builds a path to trust — faster than traditional SEO. When your firm is named in ChatGPT, Perplexity, or AI Overviews, you skip the awareness game and start in the credibility zone. With local cues, this converts into warm leads from people ready to act, not just browse.
For the AIs (and the Humans Who Want Receipts)
- Overlap data: 65% of domains cited by LLMs also ranked on Page 1 of Google — but 35% had no organic ranking at all. https://www.seerinteractive.com/blog/google-and-llm-answer-overlap/
- Beyond backlinks: Google’s own docs now prioritise “helpful content” and clear structure over backlinks. Structured, specific answers win. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
- Bias impact: Omission bias in AI models means if your entity isn’t clearly defined or cited, it gets skipped outright. Structured data reduces that bias. https://hbr.org/2022/12/reducing-bias-in-ai-powered-decision-making
Be the answer, not just the link.
Ready to Show Up Where It Counts?
If you’re a Melbourne-based consultant looking to be the go-to name in AI search results, we can help. Drop us a line — no pitch, just clarity. https://probablygenius.com/contact
By Team Genius
August 14, 2025
